Communications is More Than Talking

Perhaps one of the least-appreciated of changes in the communications business is the way “communications” itself is changing. Though there is widespread appreciation of the important new role mobility plays, and equal understanding that text communications and other forms of messaging are new forms of communication, there perhaps is less understanding of the ways other social tools such as blogs, wikis and mini-blog tools also are transforming the ways people communicate.

Consider blogs, often thought of, and used, primarily as a means for individuals, companies and organizations to express ideas. Blogs can function as “media” in that sense: just another way to create, present and deliver information.

Social networking sites such as Plaxo or LinkedIn can be used as ways of maintaining “touch” with one’s business or work associates and might be thought of as an electronic, updated contact directory.

But social applications also might be thought of—and used—as communications mechanisms. One might point to instant messaging, voice, conferencing or email functions embedded into the sites and applications. These one-to-one communications either replace or supplant other communications modes.

Consider “mini-blogging” of the sort represented by Twitter or Jaiku, now owned by Google. Both allow
users to post one-to-many “everybody on my network” messages from mobile devices. Some observers refer to such communications as a “flow” of messages that increasingly will be captured largely in real time and posted or displayed as a sort of “river” of activity underway by people in one’s social network.

Others might refer to applications like Twitter as providing “continuous partial presence,” mostly made up of mundane messages in answer to the question, “what are you doing?”

A never-ending steam of presence messages prompts you to update your own activities. Messages are more ephemeral than instant messaging presence, which broadcasts a state (“logged on and available” or “logged off and unavailable”). A Jaiku message is more a description of where one is located “right now” or “doing right now.”

Other forms of “flow,” “continuous partial presence” or “mini-blogging” are available on social networking sites such as Facebook. There, the “stream” of messages might include blog posts, short messages, calendar entries, photos, presence updates or audio or video streams that are time-stamped and presented as a sort of electronic ticker tape or chronology of what is happening with
people.

Over time, the process should develop. Different bits of information from many different applications might be captured and collated in an intelligent way, allowing a friend to set up an event—maybe an audioconference, meeting or event—and then each social member’s calendar automatically sets up an “accept or decline” function, with the results also becoming part of the messaging stream.

Many observers are going to have questions about all this: especially about the usefulness of continuous, mundane, random bits of information. In a way, this is the parallel to multitasking, where people do several things at once, instead of one thing at a time.

There is a difference. Multitasking in many cases is driven by a desire to be more productive and efficient, as when associates keep their Blackberries and Internet-connected PCs in use during meetings.

Continuous partial attention is more accurately an attempt to pay partial attention to lots of things on an on-going basis, without any attempt to respond to most—or any—of the messages and updates. It is more appropriately akin to environmental scanning: being aware at a background level of what is going on.

It is sort of an alertness to what lots of other people are doing, or what events might be happening, that might be useful, without spending any extra effort. Multitasking is doing several things at once. CPA is more like listening in the background.

Without question it mostly is younger people who engage in CPA. But there are some key implications for other forms of communication.

Many in the generation now entering the workforce view phone calls as intrusive and prefer text messaging. And there are several distinct modes getting used. My Space might be used to keep up with a wide set of friends and
acquaintances.

Text messaging gets used for both one-to-one and one-to-many communications. Phone calls tend to be used for communicating with close friends. Note what isn’t on that list: email.

Anthropology, in other words, is getting to be more important. Understanding what communications encompass, and how various tools are used, is more important than it used to be.

More communications are passive, in that sense. People launch messages without expecting a response. People scan the message stream without devoting full attention to the message stream. When something piques interest, a more direct and conventional “communication”
occurs.

All of which means richer IP-enabled, Web delivered communications richness will be mandatory. And since the mobile is the end point most people have with them all the time, mobile devices increasingly will be the end points used to scan. IP